Page 5488 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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(3) calls on the government to:
(a) consider carefully the cost of living in the ACT and include initiatives in the 2011-12 budget that put downward pressure on the cost of living; and
(b) provide the Assembly with a cost of living statement each year in the budget which informs the Assembly and the community of key cost of living impacts of its policies.
It is my pleasure to bring this motion forward today. There is no doubt that the cost of living is one of the biggest pressures that families in the ACT face. There is no doubt that the cost of living in key, important services has been going significantly above inflation over the period of the Stanhope ACT Labor government. The figures are indisputable, and I will go through some of those figures shortly.
The reality is that Canberrans are continuing to pay much, much more and, unfortunately, getting much, much less from this government in terms of service delivery and other things. One only needs to go through some of the headline figures to know that. During the period of the ACT Labor Stanhope government, we have seen electricity prices rise by 69.96 per cent, water prices by 106 per cent, rents by 54.8 per cent, rates by 75 per cent and public transport by 31.15 per cent. The cost of purchasing a home in the ACT for a first homebuyer has got much higher and the burden of repayments has got much, much greater.
When we look at the issues that we as representatives of our community need to take care of, seeking to lift some of this burden would have to rate right up there with the most important of our duties. There are a number of cost burdens which an ACT government has little or no influence over, there are many where it has some or significant influence over, and there are others where it has exclusive influence. I want to look at those various cost pressures, because we cannot divorce these cost pressures which are put on the people of the ACT by the ACT government directly and indirectly from the other cost pressures that they face for which the ACT government does not have responsibility.
On the back of questioning from the Canberra Liberals last week, it was revealed that $225 would be added to household electricity bills as a result of the government’s solar feed-in tariff. The front page of the Canberra Times on the Saturday following that questioning showed interest rates going up and putting pressure on many families—an issue the ACT government does not control—along with the addition of $225 as a result of the solar feed-in tariff—an issue the ACT government does control. The ACT Labor government is placing significant additional burdens on families in the ACT.
It is only the Canberra Liberals who stand in this place regularly and highlight these cost of living pressures, highlight what we can do differently and put forward policies for easing some of this burden. We argue against policies which deliberately increase that burden in an unreasonable way. We are the people who stand up here for middle income families. When we had the debate a while ago about a 40 per cent reduction in emissions, the reality is that it was only the Canberra Liberals who stood up and said,
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